Black Ice Burning (Pale Queen Series Book 3)

by A. R. Kahler

  The explosion is enough to jog me back to reality.

  For all our fighting, faeries have gotten into the circus grounds. Fires erupt behind me and trailers topple. I glance back, see Kingston still kneeling. Now, giant golems of snow and ice fight for him, forming a barrier of glassy swords that slice through any faerie dumb enough to approach him. But he’s faltering. I can see it from here.

  We are giving it everything. And we are failing.

  I guess there was never any other outcome.

  A blow from the side knocks the breath from my lungs, and I return the favor with a quick jab to the dwarf’s gut.

  Then one of Kingston’s golems topples, and the minotaur that felled it steps over the falling snow, raising its ax high in the air.

  “Kingston!” I scream.

  Just as the ax falls, Lilith steps in front of the hairy beast and presses a hand to its massive chest.

  The minotaur doesn’t even scream as its body turns to flame from the inside out, skin peeling back and floating away like paper as it hollows and crisps and drifts off into ash. Even the ax vanishes into smoke.

  Lilith looks at me then, and her green eyes are no longer haunted; they are possessed. Fire glows in the pits of her black pupils. She walks forward calmly, and every faerie that rushes her meets the same fate as the minotaur. She doesn’t even touch them. A halo of red haze forms around her, tongues of fire that wrap her in a deadly cocoon. Dryads and Wisps and centaurs leap and attack and crumble around her, turning to ash before they ever land a blow. For a moment, I am too stunned to remember I’m also in the midst of battle. Because she is walking straight toward me, carving a path through the Fey like Moses parting the Red Sea, and she barely seems to realize she’s doing anything.

  “You will not hurt him,” she says. I can’t tell if it’s meant for me or the faeries around us. I can’t tell if she even knows she’s speaking.

  When she reaches me, the heat of her is enough to make me sweat. I can’t take my eyes off of her, off those burning red eyes, the pale skin that seems to be crackling in streaks of raw red power.

  I know what she is then. I’ve seen it before, when Eli hadn’t settled on a body. I saw those eyes hidden in the depths of the Pale Queen’s masks.

  Lilith is from the netherworld. And, judging from the current looks of her, a demon. A very pissed one.

  “I have had enough of this,” she says when she nears me. “Your weakness is tiresome.” She says it as if there isn’t a battle raging around us. I can see the golems staggering around Kingston, trying to keep him safe. Failing. “Remember this, the next time you try to cross me. The next time you believe you are good enough for him. Remember who holds the power here.”

  Another faerie—an elven dude with a glittering sword—leaps at her from behind, and her head snaps—literally snaps, red light fissuring from her neck—toward him. He freezes in midair. Lilith’s hand is raised, fingers clawed. Then she snaps her hand open, and flame erupts from his body.

  Fire spreads through the crowd faster than lightning, wrapping everything around us in red and gold and white. Heat billows, louder than the screams of those it consumes. My skin screams, too. I drop to my knees and close my eyes and try to shield myself from the fury, but I can’t tell if it’s working or if I’m burning alive. All I smell is burning skin and cracking leather, sizzling sweat and charring hair. I knew I was going to die. I just didn’t think it would be at the hands of a teenage girl with terrible fashion sense.

  Then, a few seconds later, the magic and fire are gone.

  The silence is deafening.

  I look up tentatively, suddenly ashamed to be curled on the ground like a child. Lilith looks down at me, a smile of contempt on her face.

  “I told you I was more,” she says.

  Then she turns and saunters back to the circus, clouds of embers and dust from the dead billowing up with every footstep.

  Eleven

  For a while, I can only stare out at the charred fields. Nothing stirs save for the dust of corpses, everything grey and black like the clouds above. Even Kingston’s golden familiar is gone, and I don’t know if it’s dead—if that’s possible—or returned to its host. Which reminds me . . .

  I jog over to Kingston’s side. He’s not staring at the field. He’s looking at the circus pitch.

  The tent is mostly intact, but probably only because it wasn’t fully assembled. The main steel pillars are blackened, and charred holes dot the canvas sides—those that aren’t completely ripped or burned away. The surrounding tents and trailers are smoking or overturned or no more than piles of debris. There’s no motion amidst the setup, either. Every single faerie that fought here has been turned to ash by a girl that I thought was just a mortal psychopath.

  “What is she?” I whisper. I already know the answer. I just want to hear it from him. I want to know why the circus has been harboring a creature like that.

  Kingston looks up at me, and it’s only then I realize there are tears in his eyes. He doesn’t even bother wiping them away.

  “Lilith?” he asks, his voice gritty as sandpaper.

  “No. The other creepy teenage girl who magically slayed all our enemies in a single go.”

  He looks away, back to the tent and the ruins of his circus.

  “They’ll be back,” he whispers.

  “Kingston,” I say. I put a hand on his shoulder. Boy’s clearly in shock, but now’s not the time. “What the hell is Lilith?”

  He shakes his head. For all his lies, this response, I know, is truth. He’s just as shocked as I am.

  “She’s supposed to be a normal girl.”

  “What do you mean, supposed to be?”

  He opens his mouth, but before he can get anything out, there’s the slam of a door. I grab an ax and ready myself; in the silence, I can hear the thud of footsteps on the charred earth as they near. Maybe it’s Austin, or maybe one of the Fey had been hiding in a trailer.

  “What the hell?” I mutter.

  Because it’s not a faerie heading our way, not really, but a tiny statue of a satyr. I jog toward him and meet him halfway.

  “Pan, what are you—”

  It’s then that I realize he smells of smoke, and his marbled body is burnt.

  “You must come,” he says, panting. Statues can pant?

  “What’s going on?”

  “The Pale Queen,” he says. “She is attacking Winter. And she is winning.”

  Before I can agree or tell him he should be bringing Kingston, or even Lilith, there’s a twist of magic that might be his or might be Kingston’s, and the circus disappears from sight.

  Winter is in chaos.

  The tower Pan portals to grants a view of the entire kingdom, and that view is enough to tell me we are fucked. Streaks of magic arc through the sky like comets, landing in the city below, sending up explosions of white and emerald light. In the city. The enemy is already within the city.

  Mab stands there, fingers white-knuckled on the railing. She’s in her battle garb, her hair held up with stiletto daggers and her lips tight as a sprung trap. She doesn’t even break her gaze from her crumbling kingdom when we appear, just looks on with a mix of rage and horror.

  “I have brought her—” Pan begins, but she cuts him off.

  “Of course you have brought her. Now get down there, where you are needed.”

  He bows, and then there’s a pop of magic as he disappears. Since when could he just appear and disappear like that?

  More importantly, why did he drag me here, and not Kingston? Save for the limitless daggers, I don’t have the firepower she needs to win this fight. Something she has to know. And I highly doubt she brought me up here to fling knives down at her enemies. She could achieve the same effect by emptying the castle’s cutlery drawers.

  I can’t imagine it’s because she—like Melody—wants me around in her final moments. That would be way too soft. She also doesn’t seem to be the type to offer any final words of wisdo
m or apology.

  She brought me here because she needs something from me.

  Hours ago, I might have spit in her face. But Melody was right. It is time to fight or fold. Mab might need me, but it is still my choice whether or not I fight for her.

  I’m not going to look back on this moment and think I was a coward for running away.

  Not that I could. Since we’re on a tower with no exit.

  “What’s the damage?” I ask, stepping up beside her.

  “I thought you had left me for good,” she mutters. “After what you did to your room . . .”

  “Yeah, well, here I am. I had nothing better to do.”

  Her lips break into a small smile, but she doesn’t tear her gaze from the city.

  “We are losing,” she says.

  “You’re outnumbered.”

  “Numbers mean nothing, Claire. Dream has become our downfall.”

  I’m instantly reminded of the storeroom she showed me, the great, empty space that once housed more Dream than could be imagined, but then held only snippets: a few bolts of Dream woven into fabric, a few decanters of distilled Dream. There was probably far less now.

  A tremor rumbles through the city; I can’t tell if it’s from the constant explosions from battle or the fabric of Faerie itself breaking apart.

  “When the Pale Queen took down Oberon, she went straight for his throat,” Mab says, rapping her nails on the railing. “It seems she wishes to see not only me, but everything I have created, wiped from history.”

  “Why does she have such a vendetta?”

  Mab inhales sharply, but she doesn’t answer the question.

  “The city has been evacuated,” she says. “My loyal subjects are within the castle, and none may enter here, not so long as I stand. She thinks she can end me. She thinks I will bend to her little games. I don’t think she realizes just how long I have been playing the game of war.”

  I also don’t think I would call this a little game. The Pale Queen is playing for keeps. I’ve seen what she can do. Mab still believes she holds a few cards, when the truth is, she’s playing Go Fish while the Pale Queen plays poker.

  The city wall still stands, though the great obsidian gates have shattered. Countless Fey spill through the gap, flooding into the empty city, their shouts and victory cheers muted from up here. Even more wait outside the gates. Waiting to come in. Waiting to raze their former home. How the hell could they turn so quickly? I know Mab isn’t the . . . nicest of matriarchs, but is that really enough to rouse so much desire for revenge?

  Then I remember who I’m thinking about, and how she’s treated me, and how—up until now—I’ve felt about that.

  Never mind. I can totally imagine why they’d turn so quickly.

  “They should be worried,” she continues. “How easily they have entered my kingdom. How close I have let them come.” She looks at me then, and the smile I know so well comes back. The one that says she’s been planning for this all along. My fear turns to relief, if only for that smile. If only for a moment. “This is how I know you haven’t deserted me, Daughter. Were you down there, you would advise them to be cautious. You were trained for war.” The smile fades as she looks back to the city of rebels. “These . . . miscreants know nothing but leisure. They know naught of battle. And that will be their downfall.”

  Her fingers clench the railing. Power spiderwebs from her grip, a fissure of purple power that cracks down the tower wall, all the way to the ground. Another rumble fills the air, vibrating through my knees like a growl. But this isn’t a power used against us. This is Mab’s magic, finally at work.

  I can tell the faeries below feel it. I can tell from the way they pause, their forward momentum broken. And then, when the power manifests, I can tell they realize they’re all damned.

  Daggers of earth spear up from between the crumbled gates, slicing those unfortunate enough to be near and blocking off further entry. Or escape. There’s a pause as those within the city look back, reevaluating all of their life choices up to this point, and those outside wonder how to get through.

  Mab’s fingers clench tighter. Bits of balustrade crumble beneath her grip as more magic seeps out, and another rumble fills the city.

  “Let them see what happens when they cross the Queen of Winter.” Her voice is filled with power, a sensation even I can feel. It pierces my bones like ice, scrapes across my skin like sleet. Goose bumps race over my arms, and even though I have seen Mab enraged many times, her voice and the power she channels make me flinch.

  Outside the walls, the calm air bursts into a blizzard.

  Snow appears from nowhere, creating an instantaneous maelstrom that blots out everything beyond the walls. It howls like the screams of banshees, and honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were banshees riding out the storm and scoring some free meals. From here, I can see shapes lunging out from the walls themselves—golems, hundreds of them, waking from their eternal slumber within Mab’s defenses to make one last stand. Even through the snow, I see their bodies of stone and flame, the burning lights of their inner engines glowing brightly through the blizzard. The snow doesn’t faze them one bit; they walk and attack as if it’s a clear spring day. I know they’re effective. Even through the howling wind, I can hear the Fey screaming faintly.

  For all the chaos outside, inside the castle, everything is still and silent. Eerily so. I’m not the only one looking into the still streets with baited breath.

  Maybe it’s terrible of me to be excited for this. Maybe I’m damned for enjoying this madness, this sheer display of power and death. Or maybe it’s just a sign that I am exactly where I need to be: beside the Queen of Winter and Nightmare. Beside the woman who holds the lives of these Fey in her perfectly manicured fingers.

  Then the streets go dark.

  No fires. No magic. No light. The darkness lies heavier than snow, more suffocating than ice.

  The kingdom of Winter is a blanket of blackened silence.

  Until the screaming begins.

  “They forget,” she whispers, almost to herself, “that dreams give way to nightmares. And that nightmares are my specialty.” Her lips twist into a malicious smile, and I know immediately what she’s done.

  Despite—or perhaps because of—my training, I shudder at her words. Night terrors. I don’t have to see them to know they’re peeling themselves from the shadows. I can sense them even from all the way up here: the terrible wrongness, the suffocating fear that lodges in your chest in a darkened hallway. The suspicion that you are being watched. Followed. Stalked.

  And you are.

  I haven’t encountered them since my training, and there’s not a night that goes by where I’m not grateful for it. Creatures of shadow, creatures pulled from the darkest depths of mortal imagination. And, apparently, Fey’s. They arise as whatever scares you most, or creatures horrific beyond even your wildest nightmares. And they don’t go away when you turn on the lights. Hell, I think they like it with the lights on. They want you to see them. They want you to understand how terrible your deepest fears truly are.

  When they’re done scaring the shit out of you, drawing out every ounce of traumatized Dream you have, they kill you. If they’re feeling merciful.

  I can see nothing in the darkness, but the screams are enough. The shadows down there ooze like oil, like predators, the blackness rippling and congealing. They are definitely not feeling merciful.

  Mab’s fingers still clench the railing, but when I look to her, I realize she’s not just using it to channel her power—she’s leaning on it heavily. I have always seen Mab as ageless, but right now, illuminated by the cracks of light pouring from the fissured banister, her face is shadowed. Lined. I wouldn’t go so far to call her old, but she looks exhausted. Her shoulders slump forward, her eyes furrowed in concentration. I’ve seen her kill armies with the flick of a wrist, seen her face down hordes of wayward Fey without breaking a nail. But here she hunches, the weight of the kingdom on her
shoulders, and I can’t help but feel the burden of it will crush her.

  Her power comes from Dream. Without that Dream to prop her up, she’s relying solely on her inner reserves. There’s no question that those reserves are draining fast.

  Something in my heart breaks when I see her like this. She’s playing strong and aloof, but we both know she’s playing her final hand. She has always been the most powerful woman in my life. But now, she’s fading.

  It hits even harder than losing my biological mother.

  In that moment, I realize that despite everything she’s ever done to me, despite every cruel moment, every punishment, she’s still the woman who raised me. She taught me how to fight, how to stand up for myself. She taught me not to take shit in a man’s world, to rely on no one but myself—and how to thrive in doing so. She’s the reason I’ve survived this long, the reason I’ve truly lived.

  The last few weeks . . . Roxie and my mother and everything else . . . were just a blip in my life. Mab has always been the constant. She has been more than my queen or employer, harsh as she was at times. She was my mother. My ally. My mentor.

  And now, she needs me, when I have no ability to help.

  “Why did you bring me here?” I ask, looking back to the shadows and snow. I can’t bear to look at her when she’s this weak. It seems like a slight to her memory. “You know I’m worthless.”

  “You were never worthless, dear child,” Mab says. When has she ever called me dear child? She doesn’t take her eyes off the battlefield, and the strain in her voice is a violin string pulled too taut. “I didn’t take you in solely because you had your mother’s talent. I saw a spark within you, a fire I knew I could kindle. Even without magic, you are more powerful than any of these floundering wretches.” She gestures to the shadows as she says this; I can’t help noticing the slight shift in her body as she does, as though that small movement unbalanced her. “I have been harsh to you, yes. But I brought you here to prove that even against the greatest adversary, Winter shall prevail. Always, the shadows and the cold will overcome. And you, my child, you are the heir of Winter. A daughter of darkness. Like my kingdom, you will never crumble.”